AES E-Library

AES E-Library

Real-Time Streaming of Multichannel Audio Data over Internet

On 1999 September 26 a musical performance, taking place at McGill University, was transmitted to an audience at New York University over the Internet. While Internet streaming audio techologies have been in use for several years, what made this event unique was the audience's experience of uninterrupted, intermediate-quality multichannel audio (AC-3). In order to achieve this result, a custom system was developed employing both TCP and UDP protocols, and providing its own buffering and retransmission algorithms. The motivation for this approach is explored, and experiments justifying the decisions made are explained.